Lawyers Uneducated About Technology

[This article originally appeared in the Florida Bar Journal, January 2016 and is in response to a specific question posed to me, and using data from Florida. Slight changes have been made to convert from print to online format.]

This dynamic is under additional pressure with the commentary to Model Rule of Professional Conduct 1.1, suggesting that lawyers be aware of changing practice technology. This guidance means that, no matter how much or little technology lawyers use, they need to keep a weather eye on the landscape.

Education is difficult to acquire when it comes to technology, though. The legal profession used to have a multitude of publications – such as Law Office Computing – dedicated solely to technology and how lawyers use it. No longer. The survivors, often bar association publications, cover a broader swath now.

Develop the habit of checking in. Download a podcast but know that you can skip it if the first minute or so doesn’t grab you. Similarly, you can follow some of the many blogs dealing with law practice technology – skim the headlines, as you do with a newspaper. A few examples are Lawyerist’s tech posts and Bob Ambrogi’s LawSites. Technolawyer’s Blawgworld, a free email subscription, sends you posts they have found each week.

A newsfeed app, such as Feedly or Flipboard, and an email app can bring those posts to your tablet or phone as well. The random approach will help you slowly acclimatize to new terms of art – two factor, hybrid cloud, ransomware – even if you do not have any particular need to know them at the time. it is similar to CLE in that way.

The focused approach is more like legal research: Do it when you have a specific need, such as when you closed a document without saving it and want to know if you can retrieve it. You can always Google a focused question, using plain language, such as “How do I recover a Word document?” (Hopefully your question is not one such as “What is this bitcoin I have to use to ransom my encrypted client files?”) Just as other lawyers are the number one resource when you have a legal question, informed colleagues can be your best starting point. Most Florida lawyers have internal or external technology support. Use them. You can do this proactively, perhaps by asking them about something you have read or heard.

Do not be reluctant to Google a topic. There’s a wealth of free, reliable information on the Internet to help you understand your options. Most technology in a law practice is not legal-specific. There are huge communities of other professionals using the same software in the same way, so there is a high probability that someone else has had the same problem. Perhaps there is a comparison of other programs with the one you use.

The biggest technology challenge to the Florida law practice is not the technology itself. It is understanding what is available and how to us it within your unique practice. Once you tackle technology, your ability to manage its impact on your ability to practice successfully will improve.

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